Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Suspended-animation trials to begin on humans

This month, the world’s first attempts at placing humans in suspended
animation using a new technique will take place at the UPMC
Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania — not for space
travel, but to save lives.

The technique will initially be used on 10 patients whose wounds
would otherwise be lethal in an attempt to buy the surgeons some time.
It works, as suggested by science fiction, by cooling the body — but not
by applying an external temperature change.

Instead, a team of surgeons will remove all of the patient’s blood,
replacing it with a cold saline solution. This will cool the body,
slowing its functions to a halt and reducing the need for oxygen.
Effects similar to this have been seen in accidents: Swedish Anna Bågenholm survived trapped under a layer of ice in freezing water for 80 minutes in a skiing accident; Japanese Mitsutaka Uchikoshi survived 24 days without food or water by entering a state of hypothermic hibernation.

“We are suspending life, but we don’t like to call it suspended
animation because it sounds like science fiction,” Doctor Samuel
Tisherman, the surgeon who will lead the trial, told New Scientist. “So we call it emergency preservation and resuscitation.”